New York’s FBI and U.S. Attorney’s offices have charged five leaders of Lev Tahor, a Jewish cult, with child exploitation after the men kidnapped a 14-year-old girl in 2018, the Department of Justice said in a press release Monday. Nachman Helbrans, Mayer Rosner, Yakov Weingarten, Shmiel Weingarten and Yoil Weingarten brought the girl from New…
“There’s a Jewish word, mishpucha, which means family. As soon as I met Lauren, I knew she was mishpucha,” Sarah Edmondson says of Lauren Salzman, the woman who would eventually coerce her to brand her pelvis in an excruciating initiation rite into a secretive enclave billing itself as a women’s empowerment group. It’s a particularly…
On Saturday mornings, my father roused us with, “Boys, girls, get up! You got to make hay while the sun shines!” We exited our rooms — there were two or three or four siblings per room, depending on the year, and we fought over access to the one bathroom. Then we ate a quick breakfast…
If you think Judaism has got problems, you’ve clearly never heard of IHM — the Institute For The Higher Mind. This self-help organization, which has some creepy similarities to Scientology, provides the dramatic setting of E! Network’s scripted show_ The Arrangement_, whose first season premiered last year. Produced by Jewish producer Jonathan Abrahams — known…
In their early 20s, Sara and Clare Bronfman were looking for some direction in life, a way to focus and find fulfillment. The two youngest daughters of Jewish billionaire Edgar Bronfman Sr. signed up with a “self-help” program in upstate New York that they believed would transform their lives. But the sisters wound up sinking…
At a recent talk I gave on my new book, “The Pious Ones: The World of Hasidim and Their Battles With America,” a friend in the audience came away with some rather sharp comments, agreeing with some of the points I made, but finally dismissing Hasidim with the words “They’re a cult.” Although the book…
An Israeli court sentenced a polygamous cult leader to 30 years’ imprisonment on Tuesday for sex crimes against his wives and daughters as part of what prosecutors described as a mind-boggling saga of dominance and delusions of deity. The defendant, Goel Ratzon, 64, had denied the charges of rape and indecent assault. Tel Aviv District…
An Israeli polygamist and cult leader was convicted of several sexual offenses including raping his wives. Goel Ratzon was convicted Monday in Tel Aviv District Court in charges including rape, sodomy, indecent assault, and sexual abuse within the family. He was cleared on one charge of sexually enslaving one of the women the he called…
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NPR Legal Correspondent Nina Totenberg in conversation with Editor-in-Chief Jodi Rudoren. To benefit the Forward.
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